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The Ebon Ward: Episode 2
"There is nothing innately wrong with pissing off a Paladin." - Twitch description for the 2nd episode of Ebon Ward Episode Synopsis Travelling deeper into the Vampire Ruins, the party tries (poorly) to hide their collective evil alignment from Andrin, Maze kills Andrin after she is weakened during a fight with a flesh golem, and the party kills an evil tree before sneaking out of the mines carrying Andrin's body along with them. Summary In the aftermath of the Gravebound fight the Ebon Ward party of Maze, Musty, Gnash, Suino and Redpath gain new resolve to continue their mission and investigate deeper into the House Veredis Vampiric Ruins. Ebon Ward members and their Keeper ally, Andrin, stealthily ambush a couple of human-sized zombies and a large reindeer-headed undead to great success. They then discover a small study room and investigate, finding a book with a skull on the cover, and a plant. Gnash attempts to eat the plant and multiple party members are accidentally exposed to its spores, which have hallucinogenic properties. Investigating the skull book reveals that it is a journal filled with heavily encoded notes, and Maze takes it for later study. Moving onwards, the party discovers a stone door surrounded by odd blast marks, which presents them with a riddle written in Necril runes. They guess the solution, but not before witnessing that the door is on a timer and is set to detonate if the answer is not given before all of the runes turn red. The door opens into a grand hall filled with opulent furniture and stocked with racks of aged "Ghoul's Red" blood wine. It is throughout this room that the party (mostly Maze) begins the trend of dropping obvious hints that they are not the most morally good of folks, Redpath acquires a bottle of the highly illegal Ghoul's Red, and Andrin begins to suspect Maze specifically of being an evil undead. Serendipitously, it is around this time that Maze finds - and begins wearing - a broach with the sigil of House Veredis on it, which has the property of masking the wearer's alignment so that it appears as "neutral". The party leaves the hall and attempts to sneak past more undead, but are themselves ambushed by another giant reindeer man, which on closer inspection seems to be some kind of stitched-together construct. The party continues to lose favour with Andrin as several times throughout the fight they accidentally send errant projectiles whizzing past her head. Having defeated the "guards" the party searches some jail cells for any signs of survivors. They find a red orb on a pedestal that releases a pulse of negative energy when Maze makes contact with it - luckily Andrin doesn't identify the negative energy healing him. Nearby there is a room with a cage full of dead Ghoul Sturges and some alchemical equipment. It is at this point that the party loses all remaining credibility with Andrin when they berate her for being too quick to kill a harmless zombie cook that they find in the kitchens. Maze and Musty overhear as she appears to use a communicator in her earring to inform the other Keepers waiting outside to be ready for a fight when she returns with company. Taking the only unexplored route, the party finds a staircase leading upwards beyond a statue of the goddess Derora, Mother of the Abyss. At the top of the stairs they enter a room like a slaughterhouse, where a man is busy at work sculpting piles of meat and bone into vaguely humanoid shapes. Speaking with the man reveals that he has a warped sense of reality - mistaking even the more monstrous party members as being Keepers and insisting that he has been making golems from clay. He rings a bell to summon a giant flesh golem to defend himself, large enough that its fingers are made of entire arms. Throughout the course of the combat, the party maneuvers Andrin into the path of the flesh golem and it throws her into the large rotary saw at the side of the room, inflicting terrible damage to her back. Though in great pain, she manages to hold on to consciousness and Suino rushes over to help support her after all enemies are defeated. Maze approaches the injured Andrin and appeals to her to show remorse for the Keepers having a history of killing creatures they judge to be "evil" regardless of wrongs committed. Andrin refuses to give any assurances that she won't turn on the rest of the party, and as she walks away Maze stabs her in the back. Just before Andrin dies, she manages to activate her earpiece and gasps the words "Ebon Ward". On the other side of the room, Musty has been restraining the flesh sculptor, who has now regained his senses enough to be horrified by the surrounding carnage. The man introduces himself as Talithan and relays to the party that someone named "Eisen" gave him a bell and told him that it would assist with sculpting clay to make golems. Maze uses some of Musty's remaining dynamite to blow up the flesh golem storage room before the party exits the cave to arrive at a gorge with a waterfall. They discover that the bell - now cracked - proves to have some healing ability through moulding wounds to be shut. It also detects as extremely evil. Meanwhile, Suino feels great guilt over the death of Andrin, especially for having been standing right next to her as Maze landed the killing blow. Suino and Gnash carry Andrin's body out into the gorge, where Suino attempts to lay her spirit to rest with a few words of prayer to her goddess, Tulis, before rejoining the party. Talithan directs the Ebon Ward members to a nearby dilapidated shack where they meet the old man, Eisen. The old man greets the party and relays that the bell was originally from the Vampiric Ruins. It soon becomes apparent that the "old man" is only an illusion, and when the shack is torn apart by roots they come to realize that they have actually been talking with an animated tree. Maze persists in questioning the tree a little longer and it informs them that an old acquaintance may be able to provide more information on the encoded skull book picked up earlier in the ruins. Outside in the gorge, the nearby tree crawls closer and it is revealed that many corpses are hanging from nooses in the branches. The tree continues its telepathic conversation, and attempts to tempt Redpath in particular to continue the work with the flesh golems that Talithan started. Redpath rejects this offer, and the tree appears to take some interest at his mentioning of the "Ebon Ward", alluding that it may have a way to communicate news of the Ebon Ward's presence here to its allies. Suino does a knowledge check and determines that they are facing a "Hanged Man Tree" - a tree creature that is not native to this plane of existence. Maze throws a javelin to end negotiations. What follows is a combat in which the party strategically keeps out of range of the tree's root and branch attacks as they wear it down with ranged attacks and fend off the Hanged Men that it drops from its branches. After Musty lands the final hit with a well-placed shot, Maze retrieves one of his javelin from the trunk, which has been split open to reveal that it is filled with skeletons. With their mission complete, the party confirms that there have been no survivors other than Tallithan, and discusses their plan for returning to the Ebon Ward. They also consider whether they should be leaving Andrin's body here - Musty remarks that due to what has been going on in the area there's a 50/50 chance that she might become an undead of some sort, and besides which they should ask their boss if he wants anything done with her. The party contacts Sir Remmington, leader of the Ebon Ward, through a remote viewing spell cast in green fire. Upon hearing their current predicament of being surrounded by Keepers, Remmington directs the party to sneak away and head anywhere but back to the Ebon Ward Central base and instead instructs them on how to find another Ebon Ward base further to the south. As for Andrin, he suggests that the "Duchess" at Ebon Ward South would be eager to use necromancy on her corpse and raise her to be a spy within the Keepers - a plan that Redpath finds hilarious and Suino objects to strongly. Maze just thinks that the body would be useful for bargaining their way past the Keepers who are now swarming the area. So the party proceeds to sneak back out of the mines through a mess of Keepers with Andrin's corpse in tow. At the mine entrance the group overhears as a high-ranking Keeper in ornate armour directs search efforts and reveals himself to be the person Andrin had been communicating with. They make their exit from the mines after using the last of the dynamite to set off an explosion as a weapon/distraction, and causing a portion of the mine to collapse in the process. As the party dives off the main path they are briefly pursued by the high-ranked Keeper from earlier - identified as Lord Garron Everlyn - who seems to smell out their location and sends his earthbreaker hammers smashing through the surrounding trees. They run off through the Emberwood and evade capture. Appearances * Ebon Ward Party (Musty, Maze, Gnash, Suino, Redpath) * Andrin * Sir Remmington * Judge Garron Everlyn Notes & trivia * Inside the study room with the skull book the party also finds a scrap of paper with the words "History" and "Skull". Later in the session, "Skull" is the answer to the riddle on the red rune door. Remmington gives the party the password "History" to use at the entrance to Ebon Ward South. * The Keepers are compared to "The Order of Order up to eleven" * Andrin notes that vampires are known for placing enchantments on their belongings to prevent anyone but the undead from touching them. * When Suino detected magic on the broach the description indicated that there was "something else about it" in addition to masking alignment. * From the Hanged Man tree knowledge check: There was a witch hunt to exterminate Hanged Man trees about 200 years ago. Prior to this, vampires were using the trees to build armies of undead out of people they had captured. * The path to the north of the hidden gorge ended in a dead end with freshly decomposing Hanged Man corpses surrounded by mining tools. * From the check on Garron: Few people have seen his face but based on his near 7ft size and having scent, he is assumed to be a half-orc or something else similar. * There is a comedic bit in the character intros informing viewers that the party has run out of negative energy healing spells for Maze. Three times throughout this session Maze gains healing through exploration of the dungeon: an inflict wounds potion, the negative energy orb, and the flesh moulding bell. * Two other TTRPG streams that Surprise Round Members took part in are mentioned in the out-of-character banter during this episode: Tomb of Horrors and Tenra Bansho ZERO Category:Ebon Ward Category:Ebon Ward Episodes